Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to KC Holiday. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

KC, appreciate you joining us today. Too often the media represents innovation as something magical that only high-flying tech billionaires and upstarts engage in – but the truth is almost every business owner has to regularly innovate in small and big ways in order for their businesses to survive and thrive. Can you share a story that highlights something innovative you’ve done over the course of your career?

In 2012, I was a newlywed bartender and wannabe actor in Los Angeles. I felt stuck in my job without much momentum in acting and was struggling with where my life was headed. One thing I knew, my future would be in Film and Television. I walked into work and stumbled into a conversation with the restaurant manager, who had become a friend of mine through an acting class we took together. The topic of the discussion was not one you expect to hear two actors in LA having; it was about wedding rings. We exchanged our experiences of the frustration of wearing a metal ring that didn’t make sense with our active lifestyle. Neither of us was a professional athlete, but we did enough to know it was a problem and needed a solution.

After searching far and wide for a functional alternative to the metal ring, we only found the other extreme solution, a tattoo. Still, there needed to be an option for people who wanted to represent their commitment in a way that made sense with their lifestyle. This was our light bulb moment of innovation, but it never feels that way. Instead, it was more of a “maybe we could create one” shrug and a handshake between two friends desperate to be problem solvers beyond how Beverly Hills socialites wanted their salads.

Less than a year later, we created the Silicone Wedding Ring through our company QALO from a garage in Los Angeles. I remember staring at the thousands of rings stacked high in brown boxes from our initial order, thinking, “How are we going to sell all of these?”

Fast forward 5 years, we sold over $100M worth of silicone rings and had our product worn by athletes such as LeBron James, Steph Curry, Bryce Harper, and many more. Proof that innovation thrives in simplicity and we have no idea when we’ll stumble upon the next life-changing idea.

KC, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi, I’m KC Holiday. I help founders of $2-$10M startups unlock the secrets of scaling by discovering critical gaps in their business and providing experienced coaching.

I took a non-traditional path to entrepreneurship. At 24, I launched QALO with no business experience and sold it in 2020 after leading it to $30M a year in revenue with 100+ employees. After selling, I moved to Perth, Australia, (my wife’s hometown), where I managed the largest venture fund and Venture studio for seed to series A companies. I was the underdog entrepreneur, and I use what I’ve learned to help founders in making the jump from feeling like an underdog to having what it takes to confidently lead a scaling business.

It was during my time in Perth that I realized three things:

1. My unexpected experience has uniquely qualified me to help entrepreneurs to scale.
2. I love helping founders unlock what’s required to build a healthy business.
3. I was going to go all in on coaching.

I’ve since moved back to Southern California and gone all in. Here’s what makes me different:

1. I’ve been in your shoes and have the battle scars to show for it. – It hits differently when you are talking to your coach about the challenges of firing someone who is a great culture fit but who the company has passed by, and they say, “I know exactly how you’re feeling.”

2. I perform due diligence on your company as if I’m going to buy it or invest in it – When a potential buyer or investor is doing due diligence, it’s too late to fix anything. At QALO, I went through three acquisition processes, two of which failed, and each time we learned about critical gaps. I managed our due diligence process at the venture fund, so I spent two years finding gaps. Here’s my biggest learning: the gaps the founders think they have aren’t the biggest risks to their company.

3. I coach like I’m your chief of staff – You don’t need another detached coach telling you what to do while fires are burning all around you. A good chief of staff helps you put out the largest fires, tells you the truth even if you don’t want to hear it, refines your leadership toward your mission and sets you up to get the most out of your team.

For my service I coach founders weekly and I also write a newsletter called The Underdog Entrepreneur. You can learn more about it all at www.kcholiday.com

My process of coaching and the impact I have had on the entrepreneurs I work with is my most proud achievement to date because it is the accumulation of everything I have worked for.

(And it’s a lot of fun helping other people create the business they only dreamt was possible.)

We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.

I sold my silicone wedding ring business QALO to a private equity group in 2020. Here’s what I learned doing it:

– Buyers don’t want a fixer-upper. They want a rental property. We grew fast, so reporting-wise, our company was a mess. We were proud of the mess. It was like a badge of our growth. We didn’t manage inventory well, we didn’t have great financial reporting, and it was all because we thought how private equity worked was we focused on growth, and they bring in the operational expertise. That’s wrong. Private equity, for the most part, is not operators coming in. They’re spending a lot of money and they want one setup to generate returns on that investment. We were a broken-down house, and we thought they wanted to fix us up. They don’t. They wanted to get us out and get new renters in to start collecting the rental checks.

– Build a sellable business. You may sell one day, or you may not sell one day, but either way, you should be focusing on building a sellable business to give yourself the choice. What makes a sellable business? A healthy one. What makes a healthy one? Profitability, responsible cash flow, solid culture through established leadership, good customer relationships leading to high lifetime value, effective 12-month planning, simple ownership structure, and mature leadership.

– Understand how companies in your industry are valued. For example, I worked with a founder who was all in on growth at all costs, especially of profitability, for the sake of selling in 12-18 months. When I asked her how her company would be valued by potential acquirers, she said, “I don’t know.” Turns out the profitability she would making secondary behind her growth was the mechanism they used to value the company. (EBITDA) By going all in on growth for the sake of selling, she was actually decreasing the value of her company.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Management is made significantly easier when everyone in the company knows where the company is going and what it means to win. At a high level, here’s how I think about the cascading nature of leadership for companies to become fully aligned and people to become A+ players in your culture :

(Think about –> being synonymous with the word “informs”)

Founder + Product –> Strategy –> Mission –> Vision –> Aspirations –> Values –> Outcomes –> Objectives –> Measurables –> Behavior –> Management –> People

Don’t overcomplicate it. The problem leaders have is they try and jump to the behavior portion of this sequence without first creating clarity for the steps that should be informing the appropriate behavior. This leads people to guess at what to do, and management becomes subjective.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kcholiday.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itskcholiday
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/itskcholiday/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kcholiday/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/itskcholiday
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdolE845aU3zKyvhRcjJRgw